Movie Theaters Establish Trailer-Length Guidelines

Last year, when summer movies were just kicking off, the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) voiced a complaint about the ballooning length of movie trailers. Well, now that complaint has been formalized a bit. NATO has released a set of optional guidelines to studios. The biggest point is that trailers shouldn't be longer than two minutes, which is a great deal shorter than the now two-and-a-half-minute standard. Also, trailers should not be shown more than five months from the film's release. Theaters would give each distributor two exceptions a year on both of these rules. Though the guidelines are technically voluntary, studios are concerned some theaters will use them to get out of showing longer trailers. Some also are worried that the theaters will just end up showing more trailers, as they get paid by the studios to do so. Either way, score one for the decades of comedians who've made jokes about how long the trailers play before the movie. On to the price of food! Can you believe this? Have you heard about this? Apparently, it's high.

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